


Once a King or Queen

by LullabyKnell



Series: Living Legends: Character Studies [6]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Book/Movie: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Child Soldiers, Diary/Journal, Gen, Gen Work, Growing Up, Introspection, Kings & Queens, POV Alternating, POV Edmund Pevensie, POV First Person, POV Lucy Pevensie, POV Multiple, POV Peter Pevensie, POV Susan Pevensie, Post-Canon, Post-The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Pre-Prince Caspian, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 00:50:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13353018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LullabyKnell/pseuds/LullabyKnell
Summary: A series of diary entries from the Pevensies, set after "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" and before "Prince Caspian".





	1. Susan: Meeting Digory Kirke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mythologicalmango](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythologicalmango/gifts).



> I just saw a Narnia gifset and was suddenly, unespectedly like, "Oh, shit, I have that Narnia thing I _never_ posted." And, like, well, I guess I might as well? I remembered it being alright, and looking back at it now, I think it holds up. (This is from 2016 at least, oh my gosh.) 
> 
> Disclaimer: I have not read the books in a long, _long_ time. I watched the movies pretty recently, though, I think? We watched them sometime last year with my little sister and she went through a phase where they were basically the best thing ever. I have fond memories of the books and I like the movies, but it's been a while. 
> 
> I wrote these for, I think, two main reasons (besides that I just like the Narnia movies). Firstly, because I was thinking about what it would be like to be an adult, a monarch for nearly, what, two decades or so? A successful monarch and conqueror in a magical world, and then be a kid again. What would those kids be like? (Bitter af, at least partly, and very wistful, but strong and good-humored and kind.) Secondly, because it was kind of fun to try and switch between the tones and perspectives and personalities I decided to give each Pevensie. 
> 
> This is probably going to be a series inside a fic, each chapter a screenshot into a moment of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" or one of the Pevensies' heads afterwards. Updates will probably be very sparse, if they come at all.

Like a good host, the Professor greeted us at the front door. And we all liked him almost at once, for he was eccentrically friendly and charming in the way only the elderly can pull off perfectly.

I have always found that there is something reassuring and to be respected about old people, especially those who have experienced so much and yet treat all ages as equals in the confusion of life. Unlike many of his cantankerous cohorts, Professor Digory Kirke wore his experience like a comfortable coat, full of mysterious pockets and made of bright colours, without a single button of condescension.

As much as I liked him though, for it was a pleasure to be treated as a sensible and respectable lady instead of the immature and terrified girl that I was, there was still something quite queer about him. At the time, I was not observant enough to recognize everything that was so clearly there, but I distinctly remember thinking him queer. I did not know why, but I knew him to be.

In hindsight, as much as this pattern annoys me terribly, perhaps we all should have listened to Lucy.  I found him to be an old dear, while Peter observed that he would likely let us do anything we liked, and Edmund found him ridiculous to the point of laughable, but Lucy was a little afraid of him.

I believe we put her fear down to the shaggy white hair which grew over most of his face and head, as such an odd-looking and eccentrically friendly man would certainly be enough to frighten the average little girl. But, oh the annoying exceptions that must be made for the youngest of us, perhaps in her unspoiled youth, Lucy saw the deepness of the Professor’s simplicity. Perhaps Lucy’s inexplicable _knowing_ of things and inclination to explore let her see something that we immaturely mature elders did not bother to look for.

When we returned once again to the house of Professor Digory Kirke, irrevocably changed from a lifetime away, the signs were obvious to see to a queen who prided herself on ruling unseen duels of the courts. There was a golden gleam in his eyes as he looked at us, with what might have been wistfulness or wanting, and a knowingness to the twist of his lips. A cleverness and unmovable intelligence to him, as wise as a weary oak and yet still as sprightly as a sprig. There was a graceful restlessness to his toes, which tapped with a wild beat; there was a sly note to his voice, which ached with an unsung song; and there was an age hidden in his breast that echoed a cherished melody back to us when our own hidden age called out to it.

I wondered, through the next while, and I wonder still, if Lucy had been frightened because she, through her inexplicable knowing of things, had seen our future before us in this eccentric and mysterious man. And I wonder also, if the Professor had looked at us and, whether he consciously knew or shared Lucy’s subconscious insightfulness, pitied the past laid out before him in four young children and the future that was awaiting us.

 _Queer,_ I had thought before, like the ignorant and immature girl I used to be, for I did not know the real word to describe the simple depth and wildness to the Professor. But as the queen just fallen out of a wardrobe, one look and I knew the word I never would have elsewise found.

Professor Digory Kirke was _Narnian._  

 

  * From the accounts of Queen Susan the Gentle



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure the word "queer" appears at least once in the Narnia books? They're old. I kept it because I think it gives off that old feel, and I think it's hilarious because I would totally headcanon everyone here as queer. Narnia and the Pevensies are totally not straight. How about that.


	2. Peter: The House of Digory Kirke

I confess, I do not remember much from my days as a schoolboy. My memories from that time are… not hollow… but blurred. Incomplete. Fogged in their fullness of unimportant concerns and troubles, and dim in the meagreness of the person who was living and worrying through them. Next to the brilliance of what came later, the life and memories of Peter Pevensie of London, England, are dull and were therefore duly mostly forgotten.

One thing I do remember, however, is being bored. Yes, boredom, my familiar friend and foe, it accompanied me there to the Professor’s old home and plagued young Peter Pevensie then as loyally as it still plagues me. Although to a weaker and more childish degree then. Even the ignorant fear for our parents and the distant war that I did not understand, even they could not overpower the sheer boredom of a boy sent away with only his younger siblings for company.

Without doubt, I tried to be the “man of the house”, as our mother insisted I look after the others and my Susan needed a partner to parent the younger two with, but also without doubt, I failed. Children have no business looking after children – as much as they have no business ruling a country, you know – and it is a very good thing that we had guides in both, because at that age I was certainly too bored and self-centred to look after myself, much less my brother and my queens.

I can barely remember the shadows of my younger brother and my queens, who are certainly as long lost to them as Peter Pevensie is to me. My Susan and Edmund, I do remember, were being unbearable, even more so than they are naturally inclined to be. I cannot quite remember how, but if I had to guess, I would say that my queen was trying to exert a measure of control over our life turned upside-down, and my brother was being a terrible and glum brat.

Those things, horribly enough, never managed to change.

At the time, the best my young self could do was to search for something to ameliorate and annihilate the terrible boredom, and mediate between his brother and not-yet queens. Without doubt, it was either myself or my Lucy, who was without doubt acting as bright as she was upset, who first proposed that we explore the Professor’s home and know our terrain. My little queen always shared my heart for adventure most out of all of us, the other two being more cautious creatures despite their own fellow longings and curiosities and love for discovery.

I do not remember what my childish thoughts were of the house at first, but now I will observe that the Professor’s was a handsome and homely place. As characteristic and reflective of the sly old chap as an enchanted tower of its sorcerer, and if it had been a conscious residence, judging by the respect and care it and its contents were given by the Professor as his servants, likely as fond as well.

If my younger self had known anything of sorcerers, he would not have dismissed the wardrobe sitting alone in an empty room. I have no doubt that we at least peered into the room in our clumsy expedition, and I have no doubt that my easily bored younger self immediately declared it empty and without anything of interest, before leading my brother and queens off to more entertaining things. It is embarrassing how much of an uninformed boy I was then, because any man with an ounce of logic should have known that a seemingly ordinary container with a room all to itself, in the house of queer old chap like the Professor, had a room all to itself for a reason.

Objects like that wardrobe, in my experience and the words of wisdom of my queen, tend to make the other furniture nervous, whether the wardrobe is happy to share a room or not.

 

  * From the accounts of King Peter the Magnificent




	3. Edmund: Hide and Seek

Su says that I _must_ write this journal and that I _cannot_ write it in code. And when Su begins to stress the _must_ s and the _cannot_ s, what can a poor, widely celebrated and respected king and master of law do but obey her whims? Never mind that leaving thoughts outside your head is really asking to be taken advantage of, because according to Su there is being sensible and being _sensible._

I wish I was not able to see the difference between the two. Almost as much as I wish I was able to… no, not able, I am perfectly able… was _permitted_ to get my hands on the journal that Su is writing. A _completely honest_ book of her brilliantly bewildering thought process and the contrast between her chosen thoughts and conscious admissions, ah, that is almost as terrible a temptation as not writing this journal is. But I shall refrain, because I know my differences.

Much to my embarrassment, I was a snot-nosed little brat through all our early days in Kirke’s house, unhappy about leaving London and being left in Pete and Su’s charge. Kirke did not factor much into my small world at all, and I even laughed at his ridiculous appearance when he greeted us on the doorstep, rude creature that I was. Shamefully silly creature that I was also, I did not then know that ridiculous and kindly people are not as laughable as they are laughing at everyone else, and that laughing at them left you liable to be rightfully tricked and swindled.

It was a terrible time of immaturity for all of us, really. Pete was restless and attempting to lead us to nowhere in particular, Su was worrying and attempting to grow up as quickly as she could without actually having any directions, and Lu was scared without knowing what she was scared of and looking for the happiness we’d lost. It was a miracle that something horrible did not happen.

Although, it could be argued that there is quite a lot of horror to miracles, really. What happened to us in the end, I would certainly classify as a miracle.

I remember that it rained the first day, spoiling our plans to explore the outdoors and forcing Pete to lead us on an indoors expedition. I was not of mind or temperament or experience to admire it, but Kirke had quite the house, full of unexpected places and rooms and objects. It was the sort of house that a person might never come to the end of, or out of, with the eyes of armour suits following one through hallways when you could have sworn they hadn’t been standing there before. It was an intricate and interwoven trail of hidden mysteries: my favourite kind of house to be in, so long as the host does not mind curious guests playing a bit of detective.

Alas, I did not have the time or inclination to play detective while I had the chance there. Foolish of me not to admire and take advantage of the many long staircases and winding passageways, with every sort of secret crook and corner that something looking to hide something could wish for. Kirke’s home was a marvellous place, full with the man’s personality and much of its own, and with many secrets already hidden in it to be found for those looking for them.

I don’t recall even seeing the wardrobe until Lucy brought it to our attention the next day, shame on me.

I remember that it rained the second day as well, prompting us to indulge in a “childish” game of hide-and-seek. Lu’s prompting, I am sure of it, although Pete could have been the culprit as well; whichever of them it was, the other surely encouraged it against my and Su’s protests. But as he always does, Pete overruled the argument and took action, forcing us to go along with things so that he didn’t embarrass himself: he started counting, and we scattered with fearful glee.

Lu took a hiding spot that I had my eye on, even though it was honestly a fairly pitiful one, so of course I shoved her out. Luckily for the rude brat that I was, Lu could still be pushed around due to her size and had not learned to take advantage of her height to do damage to the weak spots of her foes. She stomped her foot in anger, but she was forced to run off and find another hiding spot.

And what a hiding spot she found. In comparison, I really drew the short stick.

I always do, with her.

 

  * From the accounts of King Edmund the Just




	4. Lucy: The Beginning

It all started with a game of hide and seek.

But that is getting ahead of ourselves, first we must meet our hiders and seekers. There were four of them, two brothers and two sisters, the Pevensie children; their names, in order of age, were: Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.

That last name on the end there, Lucy, that is me. Little Lucy Pevensie: a little too curious to have a hope of avoiding dangerous adventures and with too big and too young of an imagination to care. Danger was exciting, you see, and little girls of eight years like exciting things. I was no exception.

It was danger, however, that caused us to leave our home and play our game in the first place. There was a war happening; we had been living in London with our mother while our father was off fighting, but the city became unsafe as enemy bombs came down in a siege, explosions that rained from the sky and shook the earth. For our safety, London children were sent away from their parents to live with various families in the country.

We were sent to live with an old professor named Digory Kirke in his large country home.

Peter was thirteen, trying to be the father of us while our own was off at war, but without the patience or interest for it. Susan was twelve, trying to be the mother of us, although she was bereft of the understanding that is needed to act as maturely as she wished. Edmund and I were brats, who did not want our siblings to parent us. Edmund particularly, at ten years old, was a very spiteful boy, who wanted his father who was gone and for his siblings to stop bossing him around.

Meanwhile I was trying desperately and unconsciously to be the child that Peter and Susan were trying to parent, while also focusing on having lots of fun and trying not to think much about anything, and still wishing them to remain my siblings. It was a delicate balance, and a disastrous one, because Peter and Susan did not know how to give the comfort and care that a fellow child needed.

Understandably, we were all very upset at being sent away and all very quickly bored being in an adult house with nothing to do, slightly scared of our surroundings. Our ages were too different and the war had torn our family apart in more ways than one; putting us together in the same house and telling us to entertain ourselves without “bothering the professor”, who honestly seemed quite happy to be bothered, was a recipe for disaster.

Professor Digory Kirke was an immediately kind and humorous man, and though I would grow to like him and then find him a kindred spirit, he also immediately frightened me. I cannot say why exactly, perhaps he was too loud and too open at first, perhaps it was his odd appearance. I cannot remember what my thoughts were, and even if I could, I do not know if I would be able to say why exactly.

Children often do not understand the things they know, or know that they know them, and do not always have the words to describe their knowing and lack of knowing. They are small people, with too many feelings and not enough words. It is why we must be gentle with them, and fortunately, Professor Digory was gentle enough with me to make me forget my fright soon enough.

Professor Digory’s house was much like he was. Elderly but lively, intelligent and mysterious, and full of wonder and magical things. It was a very happy house, and a delight to explore on the first day. Though, like its owner, the house frightened me at first. Perhaps I had a sense for the looming secrets it held, or perhaps I was simply very easily frightened by the unknown at that point in time.

Not too long after our arrival, we were all together in the parlour being bored, because it was raining yet again and none of us could decide on what to do. Peter was being both challenging and mediating, Susan was trying to be both motherly and sisterly, Edmund was being consequently vindictive, for even young he always had the sharpest tongue of us, and I was whining about the games I wanted to play that the others felt they were too old for.

Of course, though I lacked my later skills, I was not to be deterred. I went to my biggest brother and begged him for a game of hide-and-seek, with wide eyes and pleading whines. Peter has always been soft with me, it always seems to be the two of us against the middle siblings when they were taking themselves too seriously and sitting around too much.

I can easily recall Peter’s exasperated look and then mischievous smile, a very good and frequent expression on him, as he sat back in his seat and started counting. Susan and Edmund objected loudly, but his word was law among us even then, though not to such a powerful degree, and they were still children however much they protested. Peter counted and we went scurrying like mice.

Through the massive house full of odd things, we ran and we ran, looking for good places to hide. I thought I had found a decent spot behind a curtain, but Edmund meanly took it from me and pushed me out. As little as I was- as I _am,_ I was forced to look for somewhere else instead. So down a long hall I went, trying all the doors and finding them strangely locked, unlike the day before, until I finally managed to find a room that wasn’t.

I went inside immediately and closed the door behind me. It was one of the spare rooms we had trooped through the day before, brightly lit through the windows, nothing in it but a large wardrobe with a looking-glass in the door and a dead blue-bottle on the window-sill.

I had a knowing when I looked into that looking-glass. I saw only myself in it, but it seemed as though the reflection I saw would have been perfectly capable of waving back at me. Cautiously and curiously, I crossed the room, approaching the girl in the mirrored door as she approached me. I was now unable to hear Peter’s counting, but was uncaring of that fact.

I reached out slowly, slightly scared, because little girls were often told off for snooping when exploring and warned of the dangers of curiosity. And perhaps because there was something very frightening about the girl that I saw in the glass, and something very frightening about the furniture that she stood in. But despite my fright, something compelled me to peek inside the ridiculously large and artfully designed wardrobe, which was overwhelming in its otherwise empty room.

Why would someone leave a wardrobe in the spare room? That couldn’t be all there was, I thought, there had to be something _inside_ the wardrobe that made it special. So I opened it up, turning away the looking-glass, and was surprised and displeased to find nothing but many thick fur coats. I was terribly unsatisfied with this, because this was too average a thing for the girl in the glass to be hiding.

Determined, I leaned in and pushed past the fur coats in search of something more interesting. I _knew_ that there had to be more, some great secret at the back of the wardrobe. But however far I reached, I could not find the wardrobe’s back and had to lean in farther. I stepped inside the wardrobe, pushing the coats aside as I reached and searched for the secret at the end to its largeness; it was much larger than I had originally anticipated.

So far into the wardrobe I went, that I did not notice when its door creaked shut behind me.

 

  * From the accounts of Queen Lucy the Valiant




	5. Edmund: Lucy and Tumnus

I confess, I would give much to witness the first meeting between Lu and her faun. I do not wish that I had been there, for that would have changed things enormously, but I wish that I still could have somehow seen Lu’s face as she stepped into Narnia for the first time, and bore witness what must have been a fascinating and beguiling meeting between people of two very different worlds.

Lu and her faun have always had something between them, an understanding of some kind that I have come to believe I would only understand if I had the key of their first meeting. Lu would laugh at the thought, and insists that she and her faun had their troubles, but I believe that if there is any pair that could have experienced love at first sight, it would be them, and that by seeing it, I might be able to understand the troubles she insists did not spare them.

Not a romantic or a sensual love, of course, because Lu was a girl and her faun would never have entertained the thought – Tumnus was always such a self-contained faun, really, nothing but painfully honourable towards her, and Lu often had to coax his wildness out of him later when thoughts were ripe to be entertained – but something of a more golden nature. A meeting between people who, whatever else the future had in store for their hearts later, were destined to become the greatest and closest of friends and companions.

 It is a love story that I wish I could have seen the beginning of, not only between Lu and her faun, but between Lu and Narnia as well.

I never really got to see Pete and Su’s love beginnings as well, being in the thrall of my own selfishness and a cold-hearted spell. I regret not being there to watch them start to fall in love too, with all my being, but with them I know that I had the chance and simply lost it in my own self-centred greed. I could have seen their first blooms of love, if I had not fallen to Her bidding.

Lu’s love? A safe thing to wonder and wish upon; a secret and beloved fantasy. I never had a chance of witnessing its beginning. My weakness never had a chance of corrupting their moment, of flowing through my veins and bleeding out in my touch. If I had been there, of course, this would not be so, but it is a comforting thought to imagine a truly pure moment existed, indomitable and unchangeable… that would have dominated my pathetic jealousy and changed all my mistakes to come if I had only been there to be conquered.

 In my heart of hearts, I know that this is not so. Moments are delicate things. As fragile as silence and always a whisper from ruin. Lu and her faun were strong enough to overcome many things, but their friendship was then barely spawning. It was then a match, flickering, with no idea that it was to born to become the sun.

 A meeting of chance and wonder, fear and betrayal looming not far behind. A handshake in the snow and an invitation to tea, smiles and laughter and packages dusted with wetness, all under the dim glow of a lamppost. Terror lurking, but hope stirring alongside the possibility of spring.

 A dream slightly darkened by the memory of how I later thoughtlessly betrayed Tumnus and nearly doomed him to an eternity frozen in stone. He forgave me this, being the ignorant outsider and foolish boy that I was, but as sincere and kind as he was, I do not think he forgot. But perhaps I am projecting my own feelings on the matter; I have neither forgotten nor forgiven myself. Not really. I do not dare let myself forget the lessons I was so fortunate to make of my mistakes.

 Su can never read this. She knows I am a foolhardy romantic, but I cannot give her more evidence of such. The teasing shall be the ruin of me, if my silly sighing is not. One more thing to add to the list of mistakes and flaws I will apparently never live down.

 

  * From the accounts of King Edmund the Just




End file.
